


an old familiar song

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, I'm certain this is going to be a common topic in the fandom, Timeskip Spoilers, and mostly this is about hope, but you know sometimes you just need to write a little bit about a thing, golden deer house represent, so like my apologies there, this is about denial and this is about survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-13 05:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: or, five times it didn't matter if Claude was rightand the one time it did





	1. "everything's going to be okay"

What she sees when the dust clears is chaos. Buildings collapsing, flames rising, soldiers dead in droves on the streets. Part of her thinks _wasn't there also a fucking dragon?_ but Hilda has not lived this long by wasting time thinking about things when dangerous business is afoot. She applies the most important logic necessary to the current situation: survival first, worry about dragon later. Because neither she nor anyone she is responsible for is going to die here if she has anything to say about it.

It's the first time she leaps astride a wyvern, and the old, gentle beast that Garreg Mach keeps in the cavernous training grounds is not the fastest, but he has a good temperament for the terror of this war. Hilda commands from the air, evacuating her troops, then some of the cooking staff still fleeing Garreg Mach, then spots him: a golden speck amid the green grass and the black ash, his cape torn to serve as a temporary tourniquet. She goads the wyvern into a dive, and he follows her lead perfectly, snapping out his wings at the last second to catch the air and hover just ten feet off the ground, right in front of her errant house leader. 

The gust of wind from those wings tousles Claude's braid, and he flinches, eyes squeezed shut a moment. 

"Hilda?" he croaks, and then coughs. He's been breathing in the smoke down here. She can see his fingertips, singed where he was pulling burning rubble apart. "I didn't think you'd still be here."

She coos to the wyvern and he drops the last few feet with a heavy thud that she can see shudder through Claude's teeth, then motions for Claude to hop up behind her. He points to his injured arm and _oh_, actually, it's hanging limply at his side isn't it. 

"Claude, _why_ are you being such a _pain _to _rescue_," Hilda grumbles. She is now faced with the awkward task of clambering down off of the wyvern without having any practical experience to guide her, and the adrenaline rush that had carried her this far is starting to turn into terror. Her hands aren't going to be steady enough to get through this. It suddenly matters if she succeeds in getting them out of here, and if she fails they will literally die and she's not ready for that kind of responsibility, let alone for being that big of a disappointment and-

-and she takes a deep, shuddery breath and resigns herself to falling off of the beast so she can help Claude climb aboard. Little things, little tasks. When she breaks down the job into bite-size chunks, Hilda can handle anything. 

"Sorry," Claude says, and he sounds genuinely apologetic. He looks a little out of it, actually, and up close she can see his eyes all red, the soot on his cheeks tracked through. "I tried to get to them in time, but surprisingly you can't really stop paying attention to an imperial soldier while you're in the middle of fighting them. Who would've guessed, right?"

That explains the sluggishly bleeding cut across his arm. His sleeve hides some of it, but the gold is blackened in a spreading stain, and the tourniquet doesn't look all that tight. Hilda supposes tying one on her own arm would be pretty difficult. She doesn't comment on any of that though, just boosts him up into the saddle and then climbs back up herself. 

"That's rude. Didn't they see that dragon?" 

As she speaks, Hilda nudges the wyvern with her knees and tugs lightly on the reins. They leap back up into the air, just seconds before a rain of imperial arrows strikes the ground near where they'd stood. 

Hilda doesn't linger; she flies away, far away, the wind whipping away whatever glib reply Claude makes before she can hear it. As they leave Garreg Mach behind, Claude slowly sinks forward, leaning on her, his head resting on her shoulder. And Hilda wonders if he's going to be okay, if she needs to land soon or if they can make it far enough, fast enough, to be somewhere safe before nightfall. The question is, firstly, what is safe? Where? and who can they trust, while she's asking the big ones, too. 

"Did you see the professor?" Hilda asks, because she lost sight of them sometime in the fight, and she didn't think to look for them when she was looking for Claude. 

Claude says, 

"I saw-"

Then he says, 

"I don't know what I saw. Did the others make it out okay?"

"Leonie, Raphael and Ignatz were evacuating when I went to look for you," Hilda relays. "Lorenz- fighting I think. Marianne took Dorte. She had to make sure he'd be safe, you know?"

Claude laughs shakily, and she can feel him shuddering against her back. 

"Good ol' Dorte."

"We'll have to meet up somewhere. I'm not sure where Lysithea got to, either. Last I saw her, she was with Flayn."

"Hm," Claude sounds distant, now. "Flayn's pretty capable, and Lys'thea's good too. They'll be fiiiine. Where we should meet, though. Dunno."

How much blood has he lost at this point? She's going to have to land soon but they're not far enough out from Garreg Mach and Hilda doesn't know where to go. He needs someone who can do healing magic, or at least bandage him properly. And while she knows in theory, she's not sure she can get it done right in practice. At the very least, Hilda has no more magic than does the land beneath them. Bandages and maybe a poultice are the best she can do. She'd much rather give that job to Marianne, if Marianne were here right now. 

"How 'bout Derdriu?"

It takes her a moment to process that Claude has read Hilda's silence and is now making ridiculous, impossible suggestions to irk her into participating. 

"Too far, and you know it. Are you delirious? You sound bad."

"Maybe dizzy," Claude admits grudgingly. "Bleeding a bit I guess."

"All right, I'm landing this thing. Hold on. I don't know what I'm doing in the air, but I can fix your you, at least."

"'kay."

And she lands the wyvern, and it's not as hard the second time as it was the first. And in short order, Hilda has Claude's wounded forearm bandaged up, the tourniquet returned to its original purpose as decorative cape. 

"It's gonna be all right," Claude says later, when they're back in the air and Hilda's getting gradually more comfortable with letting the wyvern fly them like an arrow towards Derdriu. He's been slumping against her again as he gets sleepier, but jerks awake when she elbows him, straightening up in his seat. 

"You don't know that," Hilda sighs, looking over the darkened land passing beneath them. 

"I know it's going to be okay," he insists. 

Then and only then does he finally and with great aplomb pass out on her, which very nearly causes Hilda to guide the wyvern into spinning about in full circles with them still aboard. Only her sheer determination not to be swung upside down saves her (and Claude) from certain death, dashed upon the rocks below.


	2. "Of course, we can come to an agreement..."

Six months of war, and Lorenz is already sick and tired of it. How did those heroes of legend put up with years and years of battle? How did House Goneril tolerate acting as the lonely bulwark between Fodlan and Almyra all these years? He can't conceive of a world like this, torn by violence and troubled by fire and famine and death, where someone might have grown up never knowing the gentle winds of peace. The grim truth of the matter is, he can easily see that this war will not end quickly, and his father does not. It's put more than a little strain on their relationship, and this is only the beginning.

He is privy to meetings of the council, though he dutifully remembers his position and status and holds his tongue; son of one of the Five Lords is hardly worthy enough a title to justify interrupting the meetings, especially since he so often finds himself struggling with the urge to argue his own father's declarations. Did he always want this? To challenge and counter the man to whom he owes everything? Or was he content before, when he was simply attending the Officer's Academy and didn't have to wonder about anything except how to surpass Claude von Riegan and seize leadership of the Alliance. 

Today he sits beside his father, and hears the words of the newly appointed Lord Riegan, and despairs of ever presenting oratory half as inspiring. It's infuriating, is what it is. Claude never plays all of his cards and never shares all of his knowledge at these meetings, but he manages to maintain a proud confidence that inspires even Lorenz's father to sit up straighter in his seat. They talk of the latest wave of attacks from the Empire, who will provide shelter to evacuated refugees of the towns who were less fortunate, and who will provide aid and reinforcements to those towns still standing, and Claude measures out exactly the right amount of sincerity, levity, honesty: he says,

"If we present a unified front, they won't be able to bring us down, my friends. We-"

"Pretty talk, _Lord_ Riegan," sneers Lorenz's father, cutting in before Claude can finish whatever appeal he was about to make. "Since your lands border only allied territory and ocean, perhaps you think of the Empire as a fantasy from which the rest of us flee?"

It's easy for Lorenz to see what his father is trying to do, of course. He does this same thing to Lorenz all the time; overbalance the opponent with words to rile them up, to shift their emotional state, make them malleable. Then, when they lose their mental footing, slip in with calm words, smooth over the rough terrain, and make the path of conversation follow the route you wanted them to walk all along. It sounded poetic to Lorenz when he was learning the technique at home. In turns, it irked and amazed him, how well his father could upend him in every debate, no matter how right Lorenz knew he was in his heart at the start of things. With the right wording, why- one could have passionately and convincingly argued that the sky was the ground and the ground was the sky. 

Here, now, it makes him uneasy. He can see Claude's careful mask start to crumble. He wants to speak up, to tell his father that House Gloucester is not the only house in the Alliance, nor the only one in danger. But the lord and lady of house Ordelia don't even attend the council, these days, for their lands are truly besieged, and to speak for them would only invite his father to use Lorenz's interjection as a jumping-off point to further his own cause. Claude is very clever, yes, but Lorenz's father is ruthless, and has years of experience that both Lorenz and Claude lack. 

"Certainly not, honorable Count Gloucestor." Claude says, in a voice that doesn't waver, even though Lorenz can see the tension in Claude's hands. Does his father? Do the others in the council? Or is this just something Lorenz can spot because he has made it his business to keep an eye on Claude, this past year? "I would never belittle the dangers you face from the approaching Empire. But, surely, you see the danger posed to us all by their agenda?"

Margrave Edmund leans forward in his seat, and Lorenz spots the head of house Daphnel, too, crossing her arms over her chest and smiling, tense. 

"What agenda? The childish threat to demolish nobility and eradicate the church of Seiros?" Lorenz's father laughs. "They might as well threaten to burn all of Fodlan to the ground."

"Well, my friend," and Claude doesn't waste a second, doesn't leave room for another word between his, "I couldn't have put it better myself. They _have_ threatened to do just that. Moreover, they've made it quite clear they don't care how many people they have to kill to put that agenda into effect. We mustn't put your house or any of ours at risk if we can help it, but we must also present a strong front of unity in the meantime, lest they do to you what was done to the Duke of Aegir."

Something shifts, and the balance in the room seems to sway more heavily toward Claude. All eyes are on him, and Lorenz can see the pressure making him small, making him struggle to breathe. Claude doesn't look like a man who was ready for this seat of power, but he's doing his damnedest to fill the role anyway. Sometimes, sometimes, when he pretends very hard, Lorenz believes in him. 

His words have had their intended affect, evoking the image of the beleaguered and soon-to-be executed ex-Prime Minister of Adrestia. Even Lorenz's father stumbles over the idea of meeting a similar fate. 

"That is why I dare not risk publicly supporting treachery to the Empire."

"Oh, not publicly, but privately, Count Gloucester, you must! We're an alliance, are we not? Of course we can come to an agreement."

Lorenz's father's face looks dark and dangerous, but he says only, 

"Oh, yes, of course. Let us work out the details of the arrangement, then, and quickly, so I may return to my lands and protect them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which I awkwardly can't remember if Lorenz's father has a first name and maybe I'll go back in and edit that if I find it some other day whoops


	3. "I'm not a coward."

Nader the Great slams the table with both hands in fury, and he sees the way the boy prince's shoulders jump, just a fraction, despite his very best efforts. This is how he knows that the boy is not yet ready to be a man; not yet ready to lead Almyra, let alone handle these unreasonable, insular Fodlan folk, with their crazy goddess and their Crests and magic. He says,  
  
"You can't damn well expect the kingdom to run itself while you run off and hide in the lands of our enemy!"

"Fodlan is _not_ our enemy!" shouts the boy, dander up, and Nader would probably have to worry about the noise if they weren't safely ensconced in a secret little barn outside of Derdriu, with only cows to hear them argue. One thing he can credit the boy with is wit; it's a skill that was hard-earned and it's the reason Nader doesn't interrupt. He waits, crosses his arms over his chest, now. 

_He_ listens. 

"Mother is not the enemy," and his voice is softer now, and breaks a little, too honest, too open, vulnerable because Nader is too close to pretend with. "...and neither am I."

"No one has implied that you are."

"And I'm not _hiding_," now his voice is agitated, aggrieved, and Nader laughs. 

"No? Disappearing without a trace and burrowing your way into the heart of Fodlan is not hiding, little lord? Are you quite certain?"

That is the crux of things: when their princeling fled his home, Nader knew the circumstances intimately; it's not as though the boy's mother had allowed such a transgression to pass unremarked, and Nader has, when not in battle, always been the man whose business is the sharing of secrets. He knows the back routes that carried the boy safely across the border, the particular spot in the wall where he paid off guards to come past Fodlan's impassable throat; he knows the people that the boy made deals with, to buy his passage and to shore up their flagging honor. He knows the man whose death lured the boy's curiosity, that incurable ailment for which he was always so well-regarded; knows that this man was the boy's uncle, and also the subject of many fanciful stories, and then his knowledge runs dry. This reckless prince who stands before Nader now, not yet twenty years old and barely enough muscle on him to string a bow, went silent for over a _year_. And he only re-opened communications when Nader was hot on his trail, and about to reveal him to these strange Fodlanders as the magnificent (if _painfully troublesome _) prince of Almyra. 

For a fleeting instant, maybe guilt crosses those too-wise eyes. The boy has the grace at least to pretend at regret, and hunches up his shoulders. 

"In any case- In any case, I'm not in charge just yet. Not there. I might be, here, soon. And I have to prepare some kind of system to keep things running. Don't you understand? I'm coming back. You didn't need to come get me, I just can't leave these people floundering without some kind of assurance that they'll be able to keep going, too."

"The Fodlanders are not your people, little lord."

Now he sees steel, and just a little, Nader is proud. Steel is not common in the boy's demeanor; but it stiffens his jaw, and he lifts his head just a little, trying to make up for those missing inches he just can't seem to grow between them. 

"If I was willing to believe that, then I wouldn't have any people at all. But it's not that I'm either one. Don't you see? I'm both."

Nader hears the edge, and knows this will be cruel, but also: that a push is needed. 

"Sounds like the indecisive logic of a coward."

For the boy, poise and control is everything. He needs to remain always in control no matter the situation, calm even when it's someone close to him, if he's to get his way. Nader respects the sheer complexity of his plan, and in truth, he's learned more secrets today. He will be adding those to his collection and ensuring some of them see their way back to the boy's mother, who always had more of a knack for this sort of thing than her head-in-the-stars husband. Still, if the _plan_ is to find some kind of alternative to leading the Leicester Alliance? If they need some stand-in who can suitably handle the affair while the boy returns to his true home and his other business? 

First, it will be necessary to prove that even the sharpest spears won't break the facade. _Coward_. Nader knows the history well; some of these are secrets for him and the boy only, in fact, shared in the quiet of the training hall when prying ears could not catch the sound of the words. But of all the things that he was ever accused of, all the wounds he ever needed tended where no one would see him wincing and admitting to the pain, this one is the deepest. If he can't keep a cool head, then he isn't ready to come home anyway. 

So Nader watches him, and waits. 

And it's visible, the way the word hits him. It's so small Nader doesn't think anybody else would really see it, but there, the right hand- the one he uses to draw the bow, and guide his nocked arrows- it clenches, just so, before relaxing again. All the boy says is,

"I'm not a coward."

And he doesn't even raise his voice. 

Nader takes a deep breath in through his nose, and holds it, letting the measure of it all sink into his core. 

"All right, boy. I believe you." 

He offers his hand to shake, and in that offering is a promise of support. The boy doesn't let himself smile with his mouth; his eyes do the talking as he accepts, and clasps Nader's hand. 

"So, what do you need me to do?"


	4. "Dimitri wouldn't die on us."

Claude is sitting in the study that used to be his uncle's (where he does the business that used to be his grandfather's) with pens that used to be his mother's when the news reaches him. And he is already so wrapped up in this weird and ephemeral feeling of nostalgia that he at first has the _unfortunate_ reaction of smiling to see Dimitri's name on the missive after he's opened it, because that is a memory unto itself: ah, when life was simpler, and he had time to indulge in the little things that made him curious about the world. He'd spent so many nights up late and reading everything, everything he could get his hands on, anything he could find in the monastery, lest Seteth get to it first and deem it inappropriate. How wonderful a time it had been, when Dimitri and Edelgard and everyone had still been only rivals, cautiously learning to be leaders, caretakers-to-be of a tenuous but well-regarded peace. 

Then his eyes finish transmitting the words to the rest of him, because Dimitri is not the only word there, in this missive from Faerghus, scribbled in desperate hand. 

His stomach twists, and he feels as though he must stand up at once and try to wake himself, because _surely_, this is a terrible dream. The words on the parchment waver incriminatingly, and he lurches to his feet as if sleep-paralyzed, still holding the missive, eyes stinging hot. Oh, he thinks. No, those are tears. 

Because actually, this is news, and not a dream, and it is very very bad news. Already Claude has been working to understand who is Cornelia and what does she want, but getting information out of Faerghus has proven increasingly difficult. (Not least because, if he's honest, very few people in the Alliance can afford to care what's happening to the Kingdom right now, as they are just as much in danger of conquest, and just as much the target of the Empire's interest.) It is not much of a note, really; but it says, 

_King Dimitri sentenced for murdering regent. To be carried out tomorrow._

'Tomorrow' as of writing this missive is two weeks or more past, if Claude's estimate is correct. 

"Ah," Claude breathes, and the sound of his own voice startles and upsets him, makes more and more real this thing which he is trying to deny violently with every part of his being. This is almost (though only almost) as bad as a day now years past, during which he watched an army descend on one of the only places he'd ever felt safe in his life. This is every person he ever knew personally from Faerghus and quite a few who of course he's never met, now endangered by an autocrat whose involvement with the restructuring of Fhirdiad makes her doubly suspect, in his mind. She's a puppet of the Empire, perhaps, but his records suggest she helped to cure a plague, some years back. And a puppet would never move so fast. News had only just reached Derdriu this month of the regent's death; for it to so quickly be investigated and 'justice' meted out is unthinkable. 

But this is all wrong, all of it. 

"No, Dimitri wouldn't- wouldn't die on us," he tells himself, in a shaky laugh that doesn't do anything to settle his stomach. He refuses to wipe at his eyes but they sting, and the missive crinkles in his hand. He wants to burn it. Someone worked hard to get him this information and he needs to give it the appropriate response. 

He can't find what that is. He takes the rest of the day, claiming an upset stomach, and refuses all visitors until being alone becomes more unbearable than the thought of having to share the news with the rest of the world.


End file.
